Mark Rubinstein believes the "scariest things" in life are not paranormal, but the terrible shocks that happen to real people every day.

"To be stalked, to be the object of obsessive love ... that's scary," Wilton psychiatrist-turned-author Mark Rubinstein said of his latest thriller, "Love Gone Mad," in which a heart surgeon and a nurse at a Connecticut hospital find themselves the target of a seemingly unstoppable stalker.

"I think readers want to get a vicarious thrill. Why do we go to horror films? To see (terrible) things and not have them happen to us. Remember `Night of the Living Dead?' Now that was scary, but it showed things that were not part of my life or yours," he said.

"Love Gone Mad" is much more frightening than the average horror film because we can imagine ourselves or someone we know being the object of an unhinged ex.

"In my forensic career, evaluating all kinds of situations in the civil arena -- divorces, custody battles -- I've seen how love can turn to hatred and rage," Rubinstein said.

"Love Gone Mad" should be especially creepy to Connecticut readers as they experience a very unsettling tale of love and revenge played out in realistic, suburban Fairfield County settings.

Rubinstein has practiced psychiatry for 39 years, but all along wanted to be a novelist.

In a recent phone interview, the author said positive feedback he received on his medical notes were an early sign that he might be a good storyteller. "People would say, `Your case histories read like a novel,' " he recalled with a chuckle.

It was the tales he heard in medical school involving human psychology that made Rubinstein decide to veer away from his original intention to become a physician.

"With 90 percent of (medical patients) you're dealing with four or five conditions ... I began to think that it would be pretty pedestrian if I had to do that for the next 35 or 40 years."

After nearly 40 years in psychiatry, the doctor began to think about the stories he might tell in novel form, drawing from all of the things he had learned about human behavior.

Rubinstein took stock of his life three years ago. "I sat back and reassessed everything. How many good years did I have left?" he wondered.

After finishing his first novel, "Mad Dog House," Rubinstein decided to devote himself to writing, and officially retired last year.

"Being a full-time writer is making me feel so much younger," he said. "It's great to be a newbie at 71."